


Noticing Him

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: I just really love Michael, Like love him love him, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 00:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14344161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: You noticed a lot of things about Michael, but all of them were the types of things that anybody could notice.  They were things that you knew with your head, but not with your heart.





	Noticing Him

The incident with the Squip changed everything at school, but it wasn’t totally a bad thing. People learned things about themselves, and they learned things about each other. People who wondered what they would be like in a horror movie knew the answer: most of them would end up being one of the nobodies that lost before the battle even began.

You were one of those nobodies, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise. It was the way things had always been with you. You weren’t exactly a loser, but you didn’t matter either. You were on stage in the school play, but your character didn’t have a name. You were a person on the border, never enough of something to be anything at all. Even so, the Squip did make something out of you: it made you into an admirer. It made you into a lover, into the tragic side character who matters because the guy doesn’t notice them.

Even when you had a Squip telling you what to do and what to think, you had been a little enamoured with the sight of Michael Mell, Mountain Dew Red thrusting into the air. You had been a little taken in by the fact that he had come to help Jeremy, even after the fallout. 

In short, even a mind-controlled version of you was totally infatuated with Michael Mell.

You had noticed him before, but that was the first time you really noticed him. The Squip situation had proven that Michael was one of the people who would thrive in a horror movie. You noticed him then, and it was as though all of you was attuned to his presence after that.

You noticed that his PT Cruiser was covered in more stickers than the red sweatshirt he wore every. Single. Day.

You noticed that he was practically incapable of walking without it looking like he was dancing to a song you couldn’t hear.

You noticed that he had a signature look, and he never deviated far from it. It was almost like he was a cartoon character.

The trouble was, everything you noticed about him was the type of stuff that anybody could have noticed. It was the type of stuff that was observed, not known. They were facts, not memories. They were things that were known in your head, not things that were known in your heart.

At least, they were all things like that for months after the Squip. They were things like that until the day of your big Spanish test. You read over your notes at lunch, knowing as you left that you would probably forget it all the second the test packet landed on your desk regardless of your efforts.

“Hey! Hey, Y/N, wait!”

You were already halfway to the classroom when you heard somebody call your name. You turned around, heart racing with delight before your brain caught up. 

“Y/N,” Michael said with a grin. He was panting a little. “Did you forget this?”

You looked at the folder in his outstretched hand. It was yours; it was a Super Mario World folder. You must have left it on the lunch table when you left. You took it, a baffled grin spreading across your face. “Thanks, Michael. You’re a lifesaver.”

He shrugged, far less starstruck than you. “It’s no big. It would suck to lose such a rad folder.”

“For sure,” you agreed. You felt overly-conscious of the fact that you had a body. That was weird; you didn’t think about the fact that you had arms until you were forced to think of what to do with them. You were so busy trying to adjust yourself into a less gawky position that you didn’t pay attention to what you were saying. “Anything with magic mushrooms is something I need.”

The two of you gaped at each other, and you weren’t sure who was more surprised.

“Wow,” you said with horror. Your cheeks started to burn.

“Wow,” he replied, and started to laugh. He had a wonderful laugh, immediately turning your heart into a mess of delight and confusion. 

“I think that I’m going to go die,” you said. 

“Don’t,” he said with a broad smile. “That was awesome.”

“No,” you said with a sharp nod over your shoulder. “I have a test next period. My life ends there.”

“Too bad,” he said. His head nodded in time to a song that you could almost hear blaring through his headphones. “Well, I’ll go to your funeral.”

You laughed. “I never invited you.”

“You don’t get to decide who goes to your funeral,” Michael said.

You hugged your folder close to your chest. “I’ll make a note of it. ‘Mom, don’t invite Michael to my funeral. I would rather die than have him there.’”

He grinned at you, slightly mystified and very amused. “I don’t think she’ll appreciate death jokes so soon after you kick the bucket.”

“Maybe so,” you said sagely. “I guess if I die, you can come to my funeral.”

“Great, I finally get invited to a party, and you might not even die.”

The warning bell rang, and though you knew that you couldn’t just skip a test to talk to a boy, you desperately wanted to. Looking at him, frozen in a smile, you wanted to stop time. You wanted to test your luck; maybe you could make him laugh again. Maybe the right combination of words would change his life, the way ‘Michael makes an entrance’ irrevocably changed yours.

“Gotta blast,” he said. He walked backwards, half skipping to his music. “Catch you later, ‘Shroom Girl. Good luck on the test.”

By the time the test ended, you had no idea what questions had been on it, just like you had predicted. This time, however, it was for a totally different reason. You had finally talked to Michael. You had looked at him up close.

You spent the entire test storing away a new piece of information: he didn’t clean his glasses. That wasn’t important, sure, but it felt like something monumental to you. His glasses were spotted and smudged, and that was something that you could never have known if you hadn’t talked to him for real.

 

 

The end of play season was always a downer, but with it came the beginning of the school musical. You didn’t try out for that; your school was performing “Oklahoma,” and you would rather boil in oil than have to sing about waving wheat and “my honey-lamb and I.” You did, however, join the crew, and when you put on the headset for tech week, a familiar voice intoned from the booth.

“I don’t have any mushrooms, but are you ready to make a little magic?”

“Michael?” You peered over toward the booth, but the lights on the stage made it impossible to see through that small window. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m the sound guy, loser. What else would I be doing here?” His voice was as carefree and melodic as always, and you felt your heart slowing to beat in time with it.

“You’ve never been on crew before,” you said dumbly.

“It’s boring to wait for Jeremy to get out of rehearsal. He said that I should find something else to keep me busy, so I joined the club,” he said. “Besides, I knew that somebody cool was on crew, so how much could it really suck?”

“Really?” You were thoughtful, though your heart sank a little. “Who’s cool on crew?” Everybody was alright, of course, but who was cool?

“You,” he said. “I always saw you during curtain call, so I knew you’d be here.”

You grinned, holding down the button to talk, but not saying a word. There was a little crackling down the line while he waited for you to respond, but no words came. He thought you were cool. He thought that you were a reason to join a club.

“And look at that,” he continued. “Now we’re on headset together. Now you’re stuck talking to me, all rehearsal, every rehearsal. And during shows, you’ll be stuck listening to me talk the entire time.”

“I’m on headset too,” a nasally voice added. 

You cringed; you had forgotten about the person in charge of lights. “No, you aren’t. Get out, Clara.”

Michael laughed. “God, Y/N, you can’t just tell people to get out. Please leave, Clara. See how that’s done?”

“Sure,” you agreed. “Please go far, far away, Clara. Please leave Michael and I alone so we can be best-headset-friends all by ourselves.”

“I can still hear you,” she groused. Even so, she seldom spoke during the rest of the show. She ignored you while you and Michael played “Would You Rather,” while you competed on Pokemon contests over your Nintendo DS during intermission, and when he invited you over after the first show night.

“Jeremy, Christine, and I are going out for Slurpees after the show,” he said. “Then we’ll probably get stoned in my basement. No magic mushrooms, unfortunately, but -”

“I’m in,” you blurted. You beamed. It was a good thing he couldn’t see you; he would probably think that you thought it was a date. You definitely didn’t, but if you wanted to pretend that you might get there someday, that was none of his business.

Michael was a miracle. You couldn’t stop noticing it. It hit you over and over again, like a revelation that refused to sink it. More miraculous still, he noticed a few things about you, too. The most miraculous thing of all was that he seemed to be okay with the things he saw.

 

 

With the coming of the next play season, you saw a lot less of Michael. You had him for the summer; you had long days spent in his basement with Jeremy, or sitting in the air conditioned 7/11 while you sipped at Slurpees. It was the best summer of your life, and while the new school year was certainly better than any of the previous, it made going to play rehearsal a little bittersweet. You had Christine and Jeremy there, and you adored the two of them, but there was still something missing. Knowing what the missing piece was did not make the ache of it lessen.

One Thursday night, you dashed to the door with a smile on your face. You, Michael, and Jeremy had been eagerly awaiting the release of the newest Marvel movie. Michael had been talking to you about the possibility of going to opening night, and the night had finally arrived.

You threw open the door, smile faltering when you saw him. He wasn’t wearing the red sweatshirt. He had on a button down shirt, and the green of it brought out the green flecks in his eyes. He looked amazing, and you suddenly wondered if you had misinterpreted something.

“Hey, Y/N,” he said seriously. He smiled, but it was not the carefree grin that you had grown so used to.

“Oh,” you intoned. “‘Y/N.’”

“What?”

You smiled at him, stomach squeezing. “You never call me by my name. This must be a thing. A Thing.”

He had been rocking back and forth on his heels, hands behind his back, but he pulled them forward to reveal a mushroom. It was a regular, store bought mushroom that he had colored to match a Mario mushroom. He shifted it a little, and you saw that he had glued on little googly eyes. “Does that help?”

“Yes?” You looked between the ‘shroom and the boy, mind struggling to make the last connection. You felt like you knew what you were supposed to understand, but like the most important connection was the one that had not yet been formed. “Help with what?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure what types of flowers you liked, so I just went with what I knew would rock your world.”

Your eyes widened. They flickered over his shoulder to take in his empty car. No Jeremy. No Jeremy, a dressed up Michael, and pseudo-flowers.

A date. The last connection formed, electricity and delight and fear sparking with it. You hadn’t known that it was a date when you agreed to go, and you had no idea what to say now that you knew what he thought it was.

Michael’s smile, glued on with fear, faltered. “Yeah, it was a pretty stupid idea. You don’t have to -”

You snatched it out of his hand. “I love it. I love it,” you repeated. “I’m just - let me take it to my room. Wait here.”

You ran. Maybe that was rude, but you weren’t sure about date protocol. You set the mushroom on your nightstand, rushing to the bathroom to check your reflection in the mirror. You hadn’t dressed as though it was a date, and you couldn’t change now that Michael had seen you, but you could at least make sure you looked sort of presentable.

You fixed your hair, but that was as much as you could do on short notice. You would just have to hope that he thought bright eyes and a perpetual smile were the most attractive things you could possibly offer.

You hadn’t known that it was a date, but if you had, it would not have changed a thing. Michael was a knight in shining armour, and you were the damsel. You didn’t need to be rescued anymore, and he did not have anybody to rescue, but he had won your heart a thousand times over.

Love was a weighty word for a seventeen year old to throw around in regards to a boy that you hadn’t even been on a date with, but that did not make the truth of it any less valid.

Michael stood in the doorway, bewildered and a little disheartened.

You flew over to him, not bothering to slow down even as his eyes widened behind his grubby lenses. You pressed your lips against his briefly, pulling back just as he started to lean in to you. “If Iron Man dies,” you said with a broad grin, “I will riot.”

He smiled at you. He really did have spectacular eyes, you noted. He smiled at you, and suddenly, everything was okay.


End file.
